I have had it with coverage of the Kabul evacuation. The plain fact is that, under the circumstances, it's going fairly well. Both Americans and Afghan allies are being flown out safely and bloodshed on the ground is surprisingly limited. Sure, the whole operation is going to take a few weeks, but what did everyone expect?
But you'd never know this thanks to an immense firehose of crap coming from the very people we should least believe. This includes:
- The hawks who kept the war in Afghanistan going for years with lies and happy talk, and who are now desperate to defend themselves.
- Republicans who figure this is a great opportunity to sling partisan bullshit. Their favorite is that Biden has destroyed America's standing in the world, an old chestnut for which there's no evidence whatsoever.
- Trumpies trying to avoid blame for the execution of their own plan. It is gobsmacking to hear them complain about slow processing of Afghan allies when they were the ones who deliberately hobbled the visa process in the first place.
- Democrats who, as usual, are too damn cowardly to defend the withdrawal for fear of—something. It's not always clear what.
- Reporters who are sympathetic to all this because they genuinely care about the danger that the withdrawal poses for people they knew in Afghanistan.
The only real mistake the military made in this operation was in not realizing just what a terrible job they had been doing all along. Everything else flows from that. If the Afghan government had been able to hold off the Taliban for even a few weeks, everything would have been fine. But they didn't even try. Ghani just grabbed a few suitcases of cash and took off.
All by itself, this should tell you how hopeless the situation in Afghanistan has been all along. After 20 years, the Afghan military, even with plenty of warning about when we planned to leave, was unable, and in many cases unwilling, to fight. It's laughable to think that another few months would have made any difference. It's equally laughable to hear from the "light footprint" gang, who think that we could have kept a few thousand troops in Afghanistan forever and avoided any kind of fighting even after the Taliban cease-fire was over.
As for all the Americans being airlifted out, I suppose it's bad form to point out that they were told to leave months ago? If they had a lick of common sense most of them wouldn't be stuck in Kabul and elsewhere waiting to be rescued.
The sophisticated attitude these days is to say that, of course, we needed to leave Afghanistan, but surely we could have executed the withdrawal more competently? Maybe, but I'd like to hear the plan. The problems we've run into were baked into the cake long ago, and the actual evacuation itself has been run with courage and guts. "There's a whole nother story line that media could follow," Cheryl Rofer says. "The people who are working to keep the flights running, the people who get on the flights, the people who are helping others to get to the airport, the people who are running the logistics."
Amen to that. This is by far the biggest military evacuation in US history, and it's being handled surprisingly well. Maybe that will change tomorrow. Anything could happen. But so far the US media has been suckered into a narrative that's almost precisely the opposite of the truth. It needs to stop.
"But so far the US media has been suckered into a narrative that's almost precisely the opposite of the truth."
I dunno, it's seems like the media are the very ones pulling this narrative out of their butts in a fit of "How dare you not be influenced by our pressure? We'll ruin you!" rage.
If only someone could tell the lamestream jagaloons, from Bret Baier to Jake Tapper to Rachel Maddow, & all those besides, like Alan Greenspan's Slampiece & Alexandra Wentworth's Pocket Dorkules, that they are the dead fish bobbing to the surface.
But so far the US media has been suckered into a narrative that's almost precisely the opposite of the truth. It needs to stop.
Hahahahahano.
Option 1: breathless drama, seeking out and endlessly repeating anecdotes of individual distress and photos/5-second clips of confusing or crowded situations, soliciting the comments of the people most responsible for the entire debacle and hence most interested in casting blame on someone else, and overlaying it all with commentary masquerading as news, yielding a clear, emotion-laden, and easily understood narrative.
Option 2: sober coverage of a complex and fast-moving situation, requiring presentation of mostly boring and orderly imagery as well as occasional disorder, and including observations that cast blame in many directions, yielding at best an ambiguous picture with no easy or clear conclusions.
You are a network executive charged with maximizing profit, which means ad revenue, which means eyeballs. Which option do YOU choose?
Option 1 is basically the photo negative of the zoomed in pulldown of the Saddam statue from April 2003.
this is a great post, can you get on CNN, CBS, NBC, and ABC news to tell this story? No, why not? Because the BLOB cannot face their stupidity.
The status quo:
For a seventh consecutive year, UNAMA documented more than 3,000 civilians killed in a single year, with Afghanistan remaining among the deadliest places in the world to be a civilian.
A distressing feature of the conflict remains the shocking and disproportionate impact on Afghan women and children. They make up 43 per cent of all civilian casualties: child casualties numbered 2,619 (30 per cent) and women 1,146 (13 per cent). More women were killed in the conflict in 2020 than any year since UNAMA began systematic documentation in 2009. In total 1,150 women and children were killed (390 women and 760 children).
Civilian casualties (death and injuries) across Afghanistan have remained high over the past several years. The United Nations documented a then–record high of 10,993 civilian casualties in 2018. Although 2019 saw a slight decline, civilian casualties exceeded 10,000 for the sixth year in a row and brought the total UN-documented civilian casualties since 2009 to more than 100,000. Despite another decline in 2020, the first half of 2021 saw a record high number of civilian casualties as the Taliban ramped up their military offensive amid the withdrawal of international troops.
So how do you stop that with a few thousand US / NATO troops?
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/war-afghanistan
https://unama.unmissions.org/surge-civilian-casualties-following-afghanistan-peace-negotiations-start-un-report
Sources.
Justin
Unfortunately this has been true for a long time
Total casualties in Vietnam were 1.3 MILLION yet we focus on the approximately 50K U.S. soldiers who died
Afghanistan, for some reason has really brought the woman and children concern to the forefront. Is this because Muslims believe that women should be obedient to men? Or that the tribal factions are more strict in how they treat their women?
This is wheat I think western civilizations lose sight of. Not everyone in this world believes as we do that EVERYONE is created equal and we proudly tout the accomplishments of women, people with disabilities and our youth In THEIR world women are obedient to men to a fault. They are breeders. I don't like it and have never understood it but after reading about some of our Christian beliefs I can see why some of the old school thinking is still around for Muslims.
So do we accept this? This is what Christ taught us to be accepting. Or do we use political and military force to try to convince them that western civilization has the right idea ONLY to have them convinced back by their religious beliefs?
I have come to terms with this over my long life but I still don't like it, at all. Military intervention into a world where the political, civilized, religious belies are so different than ours is bound to fail, UNLESS we occupy that world, and extend our influence over that world for generations
The media are dependent on officials in the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the Defense Department for access to information, especially for access to "leaks." When forced to choose between Biden and their occult sources, they choose the latter. So the narrative runs in ways that protect the "blob." Normally the "blob" and the President are on the same side--this time they are not.
Ironically, the right has been aware for a long time that the media will fabricate and lie whenever it suits their purposes--they haven't caught on to the fact that Fox, OAN and Newsmax are just as bad or worse. But the left has, until now, been oblivious to it because the media narrative usually told them what they wanted to hear.
Well, now everyone can see what worthless trash the mainstream media presents.
Indeed. I owe you an apology, BTW, which I most humbly offer. It seems that I mistook you for someone else, when in reality you were replying to that someone else. I hope you accept it but if you don't, I understand. My only defense -- if you want to call it that -- is that as I get older I am less and less inclined to suffer fools and poltroons. Of which we have an abundance here, unfortunately.
Thank you. Apology accepted gratefully.
👍
Isn't this a rather daring application of bothsiderism? "Legacy" media as bad as Fox or UAN? Give me a break.
What Kevin accurately describes happens when foreign policy, especially wars are the topic. CNN or the New York Times are orders of magnitude better than the right wing media on topics such as COVID, gay rights, voting rights or Donald the not-so-great.
No, he is correct. The MSM wants its viewers to believe it is 'impartial' -- and therefore trusted -- when it is anything but impartial and should be regarded as yet another in welter of propaganda outlets. I shouldn't have to shift through their stories and analyze their slant to get glean some sort of Delphic kernel of truth. But I do and the fact that I have to make this effort disgusts me to no end.
Republicans have been really good at working the refs, so to speak, which leads to large doses of bothsiderism.
Plus, they have given up holding Republicans responsible for their actions or words--anything resembling a coherent sentence is praised. Democrats, well, if they are not 100% perfect, then it must be a complete failure.
Towards that end, rally against mask wearing and vaccinations to keep the Covid crises going, then blame the President. At it's working.
As for Afghanistan, the press corp was expecting a miracle but everyone got stuck in reality. They all "know" someone stuck in Afghanistan and are afraid for them--so lash out. But this is fundamentally different than the mis-information peddled by the Republicans.
see Mitch's earlier comment below....
I guess I should be glad that something is finally going right for the US military overseas. I'm having a hard time working up any enthusiasm after decades of BS from them about their work in the Middle East, among many other places.
Kevin and Josh Marshall seem to be the only sane ones on this (also David Rothkopf, to be fair). Thanks for that.
Indeed, I read just yesterday that the real start of the Afghan army's disintegration dates to when the Doha agreement was made public about a year and a half ago. That's the deal Pompeo and other former-guy lackeys signed on to. After that, it was clear that every warlord and general and wanna-be hotshot-- in fact just about everybody-- had to be looking out for number one.
Jennifer Rubin has been excellent, too, as usual. (A truly remarkable transformation over the last several years).
It's amazing what hearing the quiet part outloud can do for the sense of self-preservation.
I imagine even a warblogger like Jennifer, hearing the taunts of the Tiki Team touting their irreplaceability by ((( certain populations ))), would think, Maybe I am not on the right side of history.
Rubin seems to have given a hard rethink on all of her previously held ideas. Max Boot has come to appreciate what the Republican Party really is, but has clung to his view that all foreign policy crises need a military solution.
At least Jennifer didn't wait till she got cancer to have a come to God moment.
Lee Atwater she isn't.
As much as he is wrong most of the time. M. Yglesias has been consistently correct about the withdrawl.
thank you
The Sunday morning talk shows were--mainly nonsense.
I loved the talking point "why didn't you have a contingency plan for the collapse of the Afghan army", when in fact this is the contingency plan. Yes, it's chaotic, but getting out 30,000 people wasn't happenstance. Apparently we should have occupied Kabul.....and that wouldn't cause any problems.
Yes, people trying to hold onto airplane tire struts was tragic--and also unnecessary. It wasn't the last flight--but you can not reason with desperation.
Looking at this outcome of our involvement in Afghanistan more optimistically, other than a (hopefully) temporary burden on the US to get our citizens and those that helped us out, this could not have ended better.
Consider the alternative of the Afghans holding off the Taliban for a few months to allow us to get our people out more easily. This would have been better for the US, assuming it went smoothly, but it would have prolonged the war with the outcome no different and with many more casualties of both Afghans and Talibans. In addition, it is unlikely that the Taliban would have issued the same offer of general amnesty to Afghans who helped us. To what extent they meant that, we’ll find out.
The alternative of the afghans holding off the Taliban for a few months to allow us to get our people out more easily ".
Yes, that is a stupid idea , but not because of your reasons. I do not think that would be a worse alternative at all for the us, and especially for biden politically ( the American public would be OK with more Afghans killed if we got out troops out). And I think you recognize that.
But it is silly to discuss if it would be a better alternative because it never was an alternative. And anybody who thought it was is fool. If any of the mistakes are due to that sort of thinking ( and I think it was), that is inexcusable.
Basically saying to the Afghan army. Please go out there for a few months more, fight and die, get the taliban more inclined to kill you, in order for us the USA to get OUR people out while we betray you to the taliban..
The Afghan army was never going to fight longer to allow us to get our people out. That is more of a reason for them not to fight . Why should they be motivated to fight for us while we are abandoning them?
Might as well consider the alternative of an alien spaceship coming down and magically transporting all Americans out. We should have gone with that alternative.
No, they shouldn’t fight to cover the departure of the US military and civilians. We might have thought that they would fight to defend the expanded (yet still limited) freedoms of their wives and children to get a broader education, hear music, enjoy sports, and have opportunities for employment in one of the world’s poorest countries. But we greatly underestimated how widespread was the wish to return to the twelfth century.
Point of reference:
Kennedy: 60K passengers per day pre-pandemic; about 16K in 2020.
Kabul isn't JFK.
The Kabul airport has only one runway and is at 5800 ft elevation, higher than Denver Airport, which makes a giant difference in operations compared to sea level .
JFK has four runways at basically sea level, similar to San Francisco.
Comparing the JFK with Kabul is beyond silliness.
OT A co-worker at my company holds the record for flying a C-17 from sea level to 45,000 feet in about 15 minutes. No word on payload. Reminds me of a Lear 24E we used to fly. We also had a Lear 25D-288, certified to 51,000 we used to take "flat-earthers" up to show that, yes, the earth horizon is curved. Talking with those people helps me appreciate how some people still believe in trump.
Sounds like we could use some experts from Quito Airport.
Did it actually change any minds?
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Excerpts of a Treasury memo to DoD IG, Jan 4, 2021:
On Al Qaeda in Afghanistan:
On ISIS in Afghanistan:
Sorry, link: https://oig.treasury.gov/sites/oig/files/2021-01/OIG-CA-21-012.pdf
The MSM knows their audience is dwindling, and they know that what remains of it skews ever further rightward. In a way, they're facing the same dilemma as the Republican party: they've wed themselves to these people in order to retain market share, so now they're stuck with 'em and they have no choice but to pander. Doing their job, i.e., report accurately on what's going on and a significant portion of their audience will abandon them for a news network that prefers instead to reinforce their viewers prejudices.
And make no mistake, TV -- linear TV -- is dying. It's only a matter of time.
That's ridiculous.
Consider cnn which has had the most dramatic change. So, for five years, they have been relentlessly pounding trump ( whether deserved or not), and then had a sweet honeymoon with softball questions for his first six months.
And then, overnight, just when Afghanistan withdrawal happens, they all decide to think of something they have not thought of for decades. Hey, you know Republicans watch more TV, even though few Republicans watch CNN, so let us all of a sudden decide to criticize biden and piss off the democrats viewers we do have, in the hope we can replace them with new republican viewers.
Has nothing to do with Afghanistan itself, it us just a sudden dramatic ploy to compete overhaul their viewing base.
No, clearly something about this particular issue touched a media nerve . More than others. Cnn has sheltered biden on other issues where he might have lied , misled, screwed up, etc. but suddenly he gets zero benefit of the doubt and even fox has been less critical ( I have watched both and, on Afghanistan, cnn has clearly been toughest).
But something is going on. And I note that, although all media has turned more negative, cnn is in a different class with the time being so consistently negative
. Does seem orchestrated a bit. Why?
I will throw out one thing going around on some places ( yes mostly conservative). Not sure I can buy it.
Cnn tends to get taking points from the top and suddenly all hosts start saying the same thing. So maybe the top brass have decided to bring down biden. The favorite conservative theory is that cnn are still loyal liberal democrats but they have recognized that Biden cannot handle the job so best to get him out asap rather than later. And this is just a prelude to getting him to resign or be removed.
The other theory ( which seems a bit more possible to me), is that cnn has always favored harriss and this is part of an internal power struggle to get Harris the presidency.
How do conservatives manage to cling to imaginary stories like 'Biden might resign or be replaced' when resigning and replacing are things that have happened once. When people talked about this in regard to Trump it was at least plausible because of his utter wrongness, but outside that to present the idea in any sense of it being serious is just ineptitude.
I would say what we're actually seeing in this is the end of a standard media honeymoon period of a new president.
It happens at about the six month point of a new presidency, all of a sudden they decide to roast him and it will be at just the moment something new blows up that doesn't carry over from the previous guy.
G. W. Bush was being massacred through the summer of 2001, which I recall thoroughly enjoying, and then 9/11 saved him and everything turned on a dime.
Your powers of analysis leave something to be desired and you've trolled this site more than once. If you want a reply, you've got to earn it. And you know, given your prior behaviour, I don't greatly care whether you make the attempt. You may think this hard schooling ... but you've been warned more than once.
Actually by " replaced " I meant the 25th amendment where the cabinet removed the president as a different thing that resignation, not resigning AND replacing. I just could not think of the amendment when I wrote that so yes not real clear. And the idea being that the threat of the 25th amendment being used to get him to gracefully resign is the scenario most discussed.
And it was absolutely not more possible in all the fevered dreams of democrats during trump administration, no matter how YOU perceive the trump " wrongness ". The cabinet has to do that , you and liberal democrats are not in the cabinet.
And, whatever you feel trump was so wrong about as compared to biden, I cannot see it being things that fall under the criteria of the 25th amendment. That is for actual infirmity, senility, etc. Not being a stupid asshole with bad policies- that stuff is for voters to decide. And note that it is the cabinet appointed by the president who takes action.
Trump going out by 25th amendment was way more of a fantasy than for biden.
Plus I can imagine biden resigning if he felt he got too tired to do the job , or because he was threatened with a bluff of 25th amendment. Trump would never have resigned. If biden was in same position as Nixon in 75, I expect he too would have resigned to spare the nation ( and himself) an actual trial and conviction. If Trump was in Nixon' s position, he would have forced a conviction.
I said plausible, not possible.
But, you're leaving 'rational' in the dust.
There is no even trivial comparison to Trump in anyone else who has ever been president, and few in any elected position in the entire history of the country.
He has no interest beyond self-aggrandizement, staying out of jail and looting whatever he can from wherever he can loot it. He is entirely transparent about it.
That conservatives seem to not notice or care says much more about them than about whether or not it would be plausible that such a low mess of infected crap could be removed from office by the available methods that were quickly found to be entirely naive on the first reasonable occasion they might have been implemented.
To say there is some equivalence with anything that might happen with a Biden administration seems to reveal a complete misunderstanding of almost the entirety of human interest.
Would be my description.
+1
This is certainly a curious alternate take on reality.
I put forth my plan in a previous comment.
Maureen Dowd said Biden did the right thing, but he did it badly. Gee, if Biden had known Maureen was such an expert on logistics, he could have put her in charge.
MoDo would have given the Talibs edibles. Would have knocked them back long enough for the US to complete the withdrawal.
They have a pretty high tolerance from smoking hash all day.
Thanks for reading MoDo so the rest of us don't have to.
Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln the play is going well.
Kevin is 100% right.
News media play a critical role in a democratic society. Media tell the public what is going on in the world, and the public trusts media to get the story right. When what media report is the opposite of what is actually happening, they lose the trust of the public and our democracy suffers. The coverage of the withdrawal from Afghanistan has been dishonest, shameful, and dangerous.
I have far more confidence in the Biden administration to do what's best in Afghanistan than for media to mend its ways.
The public USED to trust the media to get it right. And the present skepticism is justified. (Sez a former member of the “media”)
"But you'd never know this thanks to an immense firehose of crap coming from the very people we should least believe."
Yes. The purveyors of jingoism, profiteering from wars and exceptionalism to rouse the rubes.
I'm sorry, but the Washington Press Rabble has decided we are witnessing the second term of the Carter presidency, and nothing is going to change their narrative. If a bunch of rogue Afghans take some Americans hostage, watch for screaming 'BIDEN GETS SAIGON 1975AND TEHRAN 1979!!!' headlines.
And as soon as quarterly GDP growth drops below an annualised rate of 4%, 'STAGFLATION FEARS GROW' will be accompanied by endless pictures of queues at the gas pumps.
When James Earl Carter dies, will he get even a quarter of the coverage that half-termer Getald Ford got, or maybe even a quarter of what Nancy Reagan or Barbara Bush did?
Completely agree with Kevin on this.
Biden critics* assert that there could be a better way to exit. And you know what? They are right. There almost certainly is some way that would have been better. But what is it? No-one says.
So the discussion heads into the territory of late-night College musings. Could we get to Mars by the end of the year? Well, let's speculate. Someone discovers a new means of fast interplanetary travel. Someone figures out how to modify a cruise ship so it can go into space - and be suitable for a thousand astronauts and support staff. Hey, it's *possible*., right?
* - some critics don't want the U.S. out of Afghanistan, but that's a different debate.
Biden critics* assert that there could be a better way to exit. And you know what? They are right.
Are they right? Maybe. It's nice to think things could have gone better, although, as Kevin points out, it's not clear the evacuation isn't going well based on reasonable criteria. Perhaps in the parallel universe where your ally's precipitous collapse doesn't lead to chaos, messiness, and a highly challenging security situation, things are indeed going more smoothly.
Well of course critics are right that we could have done better in our exit.
But that would be a false standard. You cannot expect perfection in any sort of inevitably messy situation. Any president that managed a pull out from Afghanistan with zero mistakes and no errors should just be made emperor for life and proclaimed a God, because only a God can be expected to be that perfect.
In a messy situation, there are going to be all sorts of decision points where it is going to be a 60/ 40 type of decision, where you estimate the 60% of the time decision A is the best choice. And of course B will end being the best choice 40% of the time.
I do criticize Biden here. But not because I think we " could " have done better but where we " should " have. Where you see things like it should be obvious where choice A was the better choice 95% of the time and we went choice B.
Too many just plain indefensible mistakes for me. Things that were defensible at the time they were decided but turned out bad, well that happens all the time.
And sometimes even, in hindsight, a decision that looks good now really was stupid. I.e. you went with that 5% bad choice and just got lucky.
My assessment here is that the administration made a lot of bungles and incomprehensible decisions. But also it seems like they have not gotten any lucky breaks either.
And honestly the taliban have been masterful, although I hate to concede that to them.
I will give biden somewhat of a break for not anticipating the speed of the collapse. Should have known it was coming quickly but as quick as it was - c-mon that should have surprised most anyone. I was one expecting a far quicker collapse but I would have thoght at least a day or two more ( which would have helped a lot).
And, to be fair, can any liberal here concede that just maybe w Bush got treated unfairly with Katrina where some problems were inevitable but the media judged against perfection?
And just to remind everyone who expects this to politically kill Biden.
The last time I remember where a complicated operation went almost perfectly was the military execution of the first gulf War ( note not the questionable decisions after we won). Could almost not have gone better - everything just almost went as planned. Bush poll numbers went sky high. And where was he a few years later? Out of office.
Rational
You made some very good points in this thread.
Lets keep in mind that S Vietnam fought for 2 years AFTER we left before Saigon fell.
Biden was in a tough spot. He had a previous President who agreed to pull out (which made his base, and many others, happy). Biden was always lukewarm at best tot he Afghan intrusion.
The Taliban, because they are native to the area - were occupying a large portion of Afghanistan. Biden knew it - our allies knew it - and our military leaders knew it. We were a police force trying to train and equip a new police force to take over while the Taliban was OCCUPYING the countryside and swaying those who were anti Taliban and those neutral to the Taliban cause.
Biden did announce an end date which, seemed rather odd to me. Sure, he could pull our troops out w/o incident but the civilians and that NEW police force was already there and would remain there to be REindoctrinated by the Taliban.
What was, to me at least, the key was the president of Afghanistan leaving like a thief in the night. At that point, if I were Biden I might have held off on further withdrawals but he may have been over committed already.
Now we have a situation where there are actual friendly's AND sympathizers to our cause who cannot get to the airport because once the president left the police fore we tried to train just fell away.
Are they in danger? The NVA and VC knew they needed the South Vietnamese population when they took over Saigon. But this situation in Afghanistan is also religious in nature and the Taliban knows this which would make the reindoctrination program easier to achieve.
We needed to stay there for generations
Or accept that fact that we lost.
We are having trouble coming to grips with that
First, I am not sure the Vietnam analogy applies. S Vietnam did not hold out for 2 years after we left. We were still supporting them with air power and assistance and had a small number of troops there. And we had a treaty with the north in 73 which committed the north to not invade the south. Nobody really expected them to honor that treaty on principle like an honorable nation keeping their word. But the us said they would intervene, at least with heavy airpower, if they broke it. At the time, in 73, all parties expected Nixon would keep the treaty and hit the north hard if they broke it. And the north did expect, in 73, that they were giving up at least temporarily, until something changed.
Then Watergate hits and the north decides to do a probing attack in Dec 74. If us responds as promised, they can back off. We did not and congress even cuts off spare part supplies to the south. So now the north sees they can go ahead with a full scale invasion and do.
You can say the south held out for 5 months after us really pulled out . And they did still fight fairly hard until the last month or so.
The us has been sort of pulling out of Afghanistan for years. Remember the official us and nato military mission ended in 2014 and maybe you could say the govt held out for 7 more years from then. Hard to pick a date equivalent to our 73 treaty with n Vietnam. The Afghan govt forces held out years from any fair date picked.
As they should have. The taliban was nowhere near able to defeat the Afghan govt forces in strict military terms if the govt forces were committed and fought hard together. They gave up and collapsed without really being defeated militarily. The south vietnamese were just plain outgunned by the north as the structure of the south military that we created depended on our air support to defend against the tanks and artillery of the north.
The south vietnsmese military fought generally bravely and hard with what they had against a frankly superior armed north. Until they were defeated enough militarily to make final defeat inevitable. Then the collapse was quick which surprised too many but should not have.
The Afghan govt lost because they lost the hope of winning and collapsed real quickly, when they actually had the forces to still easily defeat the taliban.
In Vietnam in early 75, realistically the chance of the south surviving a northern full invasion without any us support was minimal ( some of which was a forlorn hope that Nixon would be able to just ignore congress). Anyone with any military expertise could see that very likely the south would lose. But the south kept fighting holding onto that slim hope until hopeless.
In Afghanistan, anyone just comparing military forces should have expected an Afghan govt victory. You had to know what was really happening, how little real commitment the soldiers had to a corrupt govt, to anticipate the taliban would win and so quickly.
And biden mistakes that arose from an expectation that the Afghan govt had a good chance to survive at least for years holding the major cities - those are completely forgivable to me. As maybe they could have from the perspective of a month ago. Any errors arising from not anticipating the dramatic speed of the collapse once it is obvious are less forgivable but maybe not that bad.
But the errors of not even planning on the possibility of a rapid collapse, those are indefensible. Also simply not doing the simple things that could easily be done in advance ( without provoking an earlier collapse) are not excusable. So not getting the visa processing procedures worked out a month ago- why not? Until a few days after the start of the crazy withdrawal, they were still asking for Americans to pay $2000 to evacuate!. Clearly that was never going to fly so why was that not changed before.
The frigging one day before all fell apart, when it was obvious collapse was coming soon, but Kabul not yet in taliban hands , things were still orderly enough to get the Americans in Kabul to the airport that day , but they stayed put.
That lack of action that one crucial day caused a lot of the problems.
Basically, I can forgive the error of not fully anticipating the rapid collapse and hoping the govt would hold. But when it seems the strategy was dependent on the govt holding, when they did not even prepare for the possibility of the collapse, no way. Especially when it is simple things easier done in advance and it appears that it was procrastinating and " don't worry we have time later" attitude.
Re Ghani leaving, do not think it made much difference. Except for the timing because that might be related to that one super crucial day.
It is almost like he saw where it was going and made a deal with the taliban and got paid off to leave at the absolute worst time. But he wouldn't be that corrupt, would he? Oh now he is talking about negotiating his return to Afghanistan? Hmm. Makes you wonder.
Kevin is getting this right. Some others are too, even in the such outlets as the WaPo:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/20/why-debate-afghanistan-is-so-distorted/
But the media are not being suckered into this kind of treatment. They have been enablers of the military-industrial-political complex all along. Older reader should remember how the NY Times for example promoted the worst lies of the Bush administration about Iraq's "WMD". Playing up war is something that the media do - if any outlet were to go easy on it, or to take an anti-war position, they would presumably lose viewer/reader share - or so they think. They are also just aligned with major industries rather than citizens, and war has been a major industry in the US since 1941.
I think what’s being overlooked here in describing the motives of the mainstream media people is that for the past twenty years, a tour in Afghanistan has been practically a rite of passage for journalists. They’ve spent time there and established relationships with afghans and U.S. military. The people trying to get out and their fears for the future are real to them rather than unfortunate abstractions, which is what they are to the rest of us.
I think there’s a risk of oversimplification and of ascribing cartoonishly malign motives when the reality is more challenging and emotionally difficult.
We spent 20 years, 2300 American lives, and $800B trying to help create a viable country there. We had allies with troops helping us, and there were 1200 coalition deaths. And now all is lost, and tens of thousands of Afghans who worked with us, or who were in the Afghan military, are at risk of severe abuse and death. Women nationwide are in for medieval repression. Losing Afghanistan is a disaster, and it happened on Biden's watch.
To me it's hard to put a happy face on this because evacuations are going smoothly.
So...20 more years? Get real.
Biden is the only president with the cojones to get us out. Criticism like yours is luke warm at best.
Losing Afghanistan happened 10-15 years ago. Biden was the only one willing to take the bullet for it.
I feel your pain and anyone with a heart should be upset at seeing what is going on now.
But some of this mess would have happened no matter how well biden might have handled the pullout. There was always going to be some chaos involved trying to pull put no matter what and we were always going to have to leave most good afghans to their fate.
At least by the situation it had gotten to by say 2012 or so, after we got bin laden. Obama might just have had a small chance to change our strategy and turn things around. By the time trump was in office, it really was too late to do much else than an inevitable painful pull out or staying there at low levels forever- at about the most inaccessible place on earth for us- and just help maintain a corrupt democracy that was not working.
I blame biden for there being way more mistakes than there should have been , and also for continually lying, misleading and trying to cover them up. Those are on him.
But blaming him for the pullout that finally happened " on his watch"? And all the pain it had to cause. No, cannot do that. This was set up by Bush deciding to nation build a democracy which came from a good place in his heart but was just stupid in practice. And Obama deserves blame as he had chances to change buy stayed with the same dumb strategy. Trump was wiling to acknowledge that it was not working and decide to pull out out but I guess you could blame him for letting the establishment talk him into delaying it.
But I assign no blame to biden for the inevitable or likely inevitable effects of pulling out itself ( like medieval oppression of women). That is not on biden.
And this sort of nonsense is why we "don't get along" as you put it. If you're actually reading Kevin's post the comments it generates, you're certainly doing a good impression of acting as if you haven't.
I Don't Like Being General Custer in Hostile Indian Territory....
....absent genocide, which we admittedly do very well, we were always in hostile territory.
I'd rather build and repair bridges in Kansas than Kandahar.
Mr. Crocker is deeply invested in his own failure as advisor and ambassador.
Remember...this is only a minute 30 seconds, but go there
Traveller
Sorry, the Youtube link to Restrepo did not show up. If this doesn't work, I apologize and give up. Traveller
https://youtu.be/-DjqR6OucBc
So, you support the Biden Infrastructure Plan?
... Nope.
Now, piss off, Confederate horse humper.
I would say the primary thing the White House got wrong was in severely underestimating the scale of the media need to crap all over him on any pretext at just this moment.
Yup.
& I love the idea, upthread, that CNN, the employer of Van "Donald Trump became president today" Jones, plus Jake Tapper & Dana Bash, et. al., spent five years buffeting El Jefe with blows, only to turn soft on El Pepe.
Rational Thought is a number as irrational as the total of nanobots in my bloodstream, after getting the Gatescine against COVID.
""The people who are working to keep the flights running, the people who get on the flights, the people who are helping others to get to the airport, the people who are running the logistics."
You have every reason to be upset because these people are getting crapped in on in the press by the Do More!/It's Not Enough! caucus. What's happening in Kabul right now is incredibly dangerous and I hope the courage they are showing in this difficult mission will, when it's over, be acknowledged regardless if they could have gotten it "right" from the start.
Speaking of which the "Silly Mr. Blair" as the Queen Mother referred to him (or I like his Tory moniker which is "Bliar") reminds me of the British general in the movie Patton that says American's are not "battle worthy" and Patton responds "It's bad enough I have to wet-nurse Montgomery, I not going to stand for that." Indeed if Limey's think it's really important to continue the mission in Afghanistan by all means do so. Only this time you get to pay for it all in lives and treasure rather than the U.S. Does anyone honesty think Great Britain could do so? No? Then shut up then.
As Andrew Sullivan pointed out, withdrawing from Empire, especially during times of military tension, led to bloody chaos and war in Ireland, India/Pakistan, Palestine, etc. While certainly not perfect and certainly gut-wrenching and sad, even worse bloodshed has been avoided so far and hopefully that continues and if it does, then it says a lot for the professionalism and skill of regular soldiers and they should be honored for it instead of being made a scapegoat for bad policy.
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There is one thing that the administration got wrong that it is fair to blame them for: paperwork snafus. The special visas should have been processed more quickly during the months leading up to the evacuation. They should have thought through what people without an SIV, but deserving of evacuation, would need to get into the airport and on a plane; it really seems like this is being decided on the fly.
In other words, what they got really wrong was the boring stuff.
"It's laughable to think that another few months would have made any difference." If there was no policy change, yes. But why on Earth does everyone pretend there could be no policy change - that attacks on rural areas were the only option?
"It's equally laughable to hear from the "light footprint" gang, who think that we could have kept a few thousand troops in Afghanistan forever". No-one ever said forever, and it's not laughable at all to think a different strategy, light on military and heavy on corruption and reform, could have prevented a wholesale Taliban takeover. It's not as if there were no Afghan army at all - it only faded away when the US stealthily left Bagram, an act which could only trigger panic.
With respect, I hate to hear the word "laughable" from someone who's never been to Afghanistan (I have) and who dismisses all options without even thinking them through.
In addition, let me point out that "the evacuation is going well can also be read as "the brain drain of Afghanistan is going well". Not that I want those people to stay under Taliban rule. It's still a tragedy that the very people the country needs most are leaving it - and they didn't want to emigrate and would have stayed and brought progress to their people if the Taliban hadn't swept to power. It's a negative side to this evacuation no-one is mentioning. But we are literally speaking of almost the entire educated class.
Right. Here in the U.S., the very people the rural areas need are leaving, a 'brain drain' if you will. And it's not as if those talented few wanted to stay either; quite the contrary. They left because of the intolerance and narrow-mindedness and unthinking prejudice. I should know; I'm one of them. So spare me your tour of Afghanistan. It most assuredly does not give you any special expertise.
Afghanistan gives every appearance of not wanting its educated class and the progress they would bring. At least, they don’t want them enough to oppose the Taliban with force.
It also appeared that the former government never took the lead in furthering the rights of women, broader educational opportunities, or better relations among the various Afghan ethnicities - they only did the least they could after being pressured by the Americans and Europeans. Maybe they knew their constituency.
Here is another reason why the withdrawal from Afghanistan was required:
"THE GREATEST risk facing the twenty-first-century United States, short of an outright nuclear attack, is a two-front war involving its strongest military rivals, China and Russia. Such a conflict would entail a scale of national effort and risk unseen in generations, effectively pitting America against the resources of nearly half of the Eurasian landmass. It would stretch and likely exceed the current capabilities of the U.S. military, requiring great sacrifices of the American people with far-reaching consequences for U.S. influence, alliances, and prosperity. Should it escalate into a nuclear confrontation, it could possibly even imperil the country’s very existence.
Given these high stakes, avoiding a two-front war with China and Russia must rank among the foremost objectives of contemporary U.S. grand strategy. Yet the United States has been slow to comprehend this danger, let alone the implications it holds for U.S. policy."
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/strategy-avoiding-two-front-war-192137
Isn't it nice to know that the war mongers and merchants of death have a back up plan to ensure profitability going forward?